Page 98 of Everything All at Once

She had told herself, very plainly, to put the bottle back on the shelf. But now she was holding it and it was open.

She sniffed it. It smelled like nothing.

She should dump it out on the floor. Nothing good ever came from drinking things of unknown origin.

But then...

It was already open.

She brought the bottle to her mouth—

And drank.

—fromAlvin Hatter and the House in the Middle of the Woods

23

Itold Sam to meet me on Enders Island. I drove there slowly, letting myself process, letting my brain catch up to what had happened in the short time since Aunt Helen’s death.

I didn’t know how I felt about her.

For the first time in my life, my feelings for Aunt Helen were in question, tottering on the edge of a cliff as high as the one Em and I had jumped from. I remembered how the wind had blown through my hair, how the colors had blurred together as we fell. I remembered the day Aunt Helen had told us she had cancer and then later, so soon afterward, the day she told us she was dying. I remembered being on Facebook and seeing the trending topics:Helen Reaves Diagnosed with Terminal Cancer.

I remembered how it felt like for the first time, her fame was working against her. People showed up at the hospitalwith stuffed bears and bouquets of cheap, grocery store flowers. They meant well, but we had to hire a security detail to stand outside her door. People took pictures of her with IVs in her arms, her legs sticking out like two pieces of straw from underneath a hospital robe.

“As long as they don’t get a picture of my butt,” she said once, as my mother turned bright red and yelled at every single person she could find who might have something to do with why people with Alvin books and Sharpies kept ending up in Aunt Helen’s hallway.

“People think you should have to exchange privacy for success,” she told me once, weak, coughing into a tissue, her cheeks pale and cold. “I don’t know when we started being okay with that. I guess whatever sells the most magazines, right?”

When I reached Enders Island, I put Aunt Helen’s letter for Sam back into the wooden box, and I held it away from my body when I walked to meet him. He was as close to the water as he could get. He held a tote bag in his hand.

“Hi,” I said when I got close enough.

He turned around and smiled, then he saw the box and frowned. “Oh,” he said.

“I take it you’ve seen this before?”

“I don’t want it,” he said, turning back to the water.

“Well, throw it away then. You can do whatever you want with it. She told me to give it back to you.”

“Some things you can’t just throw away.”

“Like paint thinners,” I said. “Turpentine. I know. You have to take them to special recycling centers. But there’s always a way. Sometimes it’s more inconvenient, but there’s a way.”

Sam reached into the bag and withdrew two masks. He tried to hand me one, but I took a step back.

“Do you trust me?” he asked. Then: “I guess that’s a stupid question now.”

I opened my mouth to argue but then stopped myself. I mean—he was right. He’d done nothing but lie to me since I’d met him.

“Everything you told me,” I said. “Everything...”

“I know. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you.”

“If you had wanted to tell me, you would have told me. That’s how it works. That’s how friendships work.”

His face fell two shades darker, a shadow caused by something invisible, something I couldn’t see.